Ucf Excels At Money Game

Research Grants Flow Into School

August 14, 2001|By Scott Powers, Sentinel Staff Writer

Not all research involves high-powered microscopes, lab rats, dusty archives or archaeological digs. Sometimes, it can be as simple as finding new ways to help a third-grader discover the wonders of science or the cool logic of math.

It's just that kind of eye toward research that helped the University of Central Florida rake in $64.9 million in grants last year -- a 22.9 percent increase over the previous year, ranking UCF fourth among the state's universities.

UCF's dramatic surge in research grants is propelling the school toward its goal of becoming a research-oriented university. But the numbers released Monday also show an almost 75 percent increase in research grants from just two years ago is having immediate impact on the daily lives of thousands of Floridians.

Chief among those was a $2.5 million state grant the university won last year to help better prepare elementary educators to teach math and science.

"We sat down to say, `If we were to improve the teaching of math and science in Florida, what would we do?' " said education Professor Judith Johnson, the principal investigator for the project.

The project moved rapidly in seven months from idea to the classroom. Johnson and other education researchers at UCF, notably Donna Leinsing and Donna Baumbach, organized a series of brainstorming sessions involving teachers, professors and others last winter, the development of new classroom materials and teaching strategies in the spring, and a series of training seminars for veteran teachers during the summer.

This fall, almost 3,000 elementary schoolteachers are prepared to try the new approaches in Florida schools.

The education grant is one example of the research money that helped UCF leapfrog Florida International University to become the fourth-most-active public-research university in the state. UCF still pales in comparison to research giants such as the universities of Florida and South Florida, which have medical schools that attract federal research grants, and Florida State University. But the increase in research money at UCF means the school can attract better professors and help lure new industries to the region.

"We want to raise the research enterprise of this university," said M.J. Soileau, vice president for research.

Most state universities also are reporting research increases this week, but none so far is matching UCF's boom. UF is up 9 percent. FSU is up 11.4 percent.

UCF's surge comes after decades during which the school was known principally as a teaching university.

In the mid-1990s UCF made the strategic decision to make research -- particularly research that serves the Orlando region -- a high priority. Still, research dollars remained stagnant for years, staying in the $30 million-$37 million range for most of the 1990s.

Soileau said the administration primed the effort in the past three years with $3 million in incentive programs for professors to pursue federal and private grants, and a more-supportive research culture. The university also hired more than a dozen high-salaried, experienced professors who are considered both research-money rainmakers and mentors for other professors.

"The faculty responded to that. Taken together, those things have effected a change in attitude. It's one thing to say that things are a priority," Soileau said. "When faculty go off to compete for these grants it takes a tremendous amount of effort. It's a hypercompetitive environment out there."

And despite having fewer resources on hand to help them compete, UCF professors are getting better at persuading federal and state agencies, private foundations and industries to invest in their ideas, Soileau said.

Research grants also pay for lab equipment, experimental analysis, salaries for research scientists, fellowships for graduate students, expenses for field studies, and in some cases the cost of building new labs.

Other big grants went to civil-engineering Professor James Taylor, who attracted $2.6 million in private money to help improve water treatment and distribution in six West Florida counties; mechanical-engineering Professor Vimal Desai, who received a $1 million private grant to set up a microelectronics "clean room" lab to support local companies; and optics Professor George Stegeman, who received a $1 million grant to help develop light-based energy sources for computer systems.

While $65 million is an impressive total for UCF, it falls far behind established research schools such as UF, which attracted $370 million in 2000-01.

"It's more than we had before. We'd like to see that continuing to increase. I'm a little nervous about that, to be honest," Soileau said. "It's a 75 percent increase over two years. That kind of rate of increase is not sustainable. We have some real challenges ahead of us."